I seem to be in a beach sunset mood at the moment, but the weather in Vancouver isn't co-operating. For the third day in a row, conditions that looked promising for a good sunset deteriorated about an hour before the sun went down.
However, I figured I could probably find something in my large collection of unprocessed photos, and here it is. This was taken earlier this year at Wildcat Cove in Larrabee State Park in Washington, about 45 minutes from the border.
I used my 3-stop graduated ND filter for this shot, but the sun still overpowered the rest of the scene, so this shot also uses HDR with a bracketed sequence of 7 photos ranging from 1/400th of a second to 1/6th of a second.
An aperture of f/16 captured the full depth of field of the scene, and also increased the starburst effect from this lens, which I very much like. There is also lens flare visible, particularly in the upper left corner, which I usually remove, but in this case I didn't find it too problematic or distracting.
Worth viewing large (again!)
A couple of other shots from my trip to Larrabee State Park are here:
I'm a British software developer and photographer living in Vancouver, BC. I mainly photograph landscapes, cityscapes, night scenes, and water.
If you're interested in any...
Love the foreground and the background details! Great Dof! The sun flare is perfect as well as the reflection on the water. All together a wonderful composition Alexis! FAV! :)
This is stunning (as usual, I must say). Thanks for the information on how you processed it, and the settings for taking it. I appreciate your including them.
Alexis, when you do use HDR, which package do you use? I've tried HDR Efex (and PS) but can't seem to get that fantastic natural effect you get. HDR Efex is sort of ok but then goes wild and throws in halos and the like. I realise this may be partly user error, but I'd be more than interested in your views.
@snaggy Thanks Kev! My aim with HDR shots (usually) is for people not to be able to tell that they are HDR, at least at first glance, so I also hate halos and other obvious HDR artefacts.
I use Photomatix for processing HDR shots, unfortunately I've not tried HDR Efex. Photomatix has a definite tendency to create 'overdone' HDR shots with halos, and most if not all of the presets have this result. However, it is possible to control this by fiddling with the settings, most significantly the 'smoothing' slider, which I always have set very high. This stops the software from doing quick transitions between different exposures, which is the cause of halos.
It also has separate controls for highlight and shadow smoothing, which I also usually have quite high, but these can be useful for fine-tuning the effect. For this shot I had the highlight smoothing quite high to get a nice even effect across the sky, but the shadow smoothing a bit lower so that there was more tonal range in the beach between the silhouetted driftwood and the pebbles and sand.
It does very much depend on the shot as to how effective this can be (or at least, how effectively I can do it). Because the software is prevented from doing rapid changes in exposure, this can result in areas which do not retain detail, and are overexposed or underexposed, despite the HDR processing. Quite a few of the HDR shots I take I simply cannot acceptably process without them appearing overdone.
@abirkill Thanks Alexis, a brilliantly well informed reply as always!
I think the truth is my skills aren't yet high enough to get the results I want (both in terms of shooting the shots in the first place and post processing), combined with not using the best toolset. I had thought of having a play with Photomatix, and I think I will, but I think I also need to get into the world of black cards and ND Grads and try to get it more right in the first place. It's interesting to hear that even guys like yourselves can't always get the software to do what you want - but then I guess if it was easy, everybody would be doing it!
Once again, thanks for sharing your knowledge - I'm going to copy your words and keep them safe in the hope that one day I'll get a shot even half as good as one of yours.
I use Photomatix for processing HDR shots, unfortunately I've not tried HDR Efex. Photomatix has a definite tendency to create 'overdone' HDR shots with halos, and most if not all of the presets have this result. However, it is possible to control this by fiddling with the settings, most significantly the 'smoothing' slider, which I always have set very high. This stops the software from doing quick transitions between different exposures, which is the cause of halos.
It also has separate controls for highlight and shadow smoothing, which I also usually have quite high, but these can be useful for fine-tuning the effect. For this shot I had the highlight smoothing quite high to get a nice even effect across the sky, but the shadow smoothing a bit lower so that there was more tonal range in the beach between the silhouetted driftwood and the pebbles and sand.
It does very much depend on the shot as to how effective this can be (or at least, how effectively I can do it). Because the software is prevented from doing rapid changes in exposure, this can result in areas which do not retain detail, and are overexposed or underexposed, despite the HDR processing. Quite a few of the HDR shots I take I simply cannot acceptably process without them appearing overdone.
I think the truth is my skills aren't yet high enough to get the results I want (both in terms of shooting the shots in the first place and post processing), combined with not using the best toolset. I had thought of having a play with Photomatix, and I think I will, but I think I also need to get into the world of black cards and ND Grads and try to get it more right in the first place. It's interesting to hear that even guys like yourselves can't always get the software to do what you want - but then I guess if it was easy, everybody would be doing it!
Once again, thanks for sharing your knowledge - I'm going to copy your words and keep them safe in the hope that one day I'll get a shot even half as good as one of yours.